Tommy Chong: Oprah Winfrey would laugh at Rae Dawn's N-word slur

Scott Collins

Tommy Chong thinks the controversy over his daughter Rae Dawn using a racial slur to describe Oprah Winfrey should just go up in smoke.

Earlier this month, former "The Color Purple" costar Rae Dawn Chong kicked up a fuss when she called the queen of talk TV a "field [n-word]" and a "fat" "ugly" "bee-yotch." But now her 75-year-old dad -- half of the popular 1970s reefer-smoking comedy team of Cheech & Chong -- is downplaying the whole thing.

"Knowing Oprah, she would probably read it and just chuckle and probably agree with Rae Dawn ... she probably would be working in the field," Chong told TMZ in a video interview. He summed up the entire incident as "so minor" that it was hardly worth talking about.

We hate to disagree with the estimable Mr. Chong -- whose blasé attitude toward the controversy is in its own way charming, the kind of relaxed worldview that perhaps only years of recreational drug use could produce -- but Oprah doesn't tend to laugh off slights. Anyone who recalls what happened when she was locked out of an Hermès store in Paris can attest to that.

What do you think? Did Tommy Chong successfully wave off the lingering fumes from his daughter's naughty remarks? Or did it just make things worse?